


I Only Feel You in Empty Spaces

by northpen



Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Angst, But nothing is explicity NSFW, Content warnings:, Dissociation, Gen, Kind of a DOTD fix-it, Possession AU, Post-Skybound, Rated mature for some discussions in the story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:55:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28268739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northpen/pseuds/northpen
Summary: Terrified of disappearing forever, Cole possesses Jay to remain anchored in a world where he no longer exists.(DOTD AU in which Cole is fading from existence).[ON HIATUS]
Relationships: Its seriously not a focus at all sorry, Jaya but only on the side
Comments: 40
Kudos: 101





	1. just curl up and wait it out, blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello everyone! 
> 
> this fic was conceptualized a few years ago, when i was mad about the way the ninja were just suddenly forgetting about cole during dotd. in a way, this is a fix-it, but also just a fun AU based on what was happening at the beginning of the special. 
> 
> im aiming to write a story thats more light-hearted than usual, so i hope you enjoy!

Jay was doing just fine.

Obviously, becoming a ninja and bearing inherited superpowers was enough to impact anyone’s mental state. _Especially_ when this unique combination of traits resulted in more near-death experiences than recommended by the Ninjago Ministry of Health and Wellness. He would need a few more sets of hands to count on his fingers just how many times barrels of guns or tips of swords had been pointed towards his body with violent intentions during his short time in the universe. 

Not that this bothered him. Everyone had a few near-death experiences during their lives, right? If anything, experiencing far more than the average person helped him in the long run. A knife held against one’s throat would scar a normal person for life, but for Jay, it wasn’t even something to lose sleep over.

 _A mind of steel,_ as Kai would often brag about. There was a slight difference between the two of them, though. Jay didn’t fear death because he’d flirted with it too many times to care. Kai didn’t fear death because he was too arrogant to believe he could die before the age of seventy.

Even his time on Nadakhan’s ship was slowly fading to the background. Only a month had passed, but he swore it was behind him. Honestly, it barely felt like anything had happened at all. Well, with the exception of the way he had to hold his breath whenever Nya wore white because his eyes would always fall to her midriff, where he was _certain_ he’d just seen splotches of blood two seconds ago—

Like he said: it was all behind him. 

Jay’s confidence in his sanity began to falter on a cold night in Steep Wisdom, where he stared at his ceiling from his bed in a bedroom that seemed a little too big for just one person. He hated the mountains. No matter how tightly he closed his windows, no matter how many blankets he layered onto his bed, he could never seem to escape the pervasive cold that was so unlike anything he’d experienced in the Sands or Ninjago City. On this night, however, it wasn’t the cold that bothered him. 

The Void. It was an occupying force in his mind, one that had introduced itself when he first stepped foot in the Monastery and never quite let go of its hold on him ever since. The Void was a con artist, a master of trickery that played with his senses and defied his spatial expectations. During the cold night, it made his room feel big and empty and made him feel terribly _alone_. 

Of course, he was alone. When the ninja had split into different rooms on the Bounty, and then in Steep Wisdom, he’d never had a roommate. He was too talkative and noisy for any of the others to bear, so he always wound up sleeping solo. It had been this way for years. So why did it feel so wrong?

He rolled over and faced the room. In the lowlight, he could make out the shapes of his furniture in the room. A dresser. Stand-up closet. Table stacked with miscellaneous items. His nunchucks, carelessly left on the floor. He’d found ways to fill the space in the room. Yet it never felt like it was enough. 

This was the Void. It inspired strange feelings of spatial emptiness, like there was always something _missing_ around him. It attacked him in his room and made him feel like he needed more furniture. It attacked him when he met up with the ninja, where he would obsessively conduct headcounts— _one, two, three, four, five ninja_ —because he could have sworn that someone else was meant to be there. It attacked him when he looked at his favourite photograph, one of the ninja where Lloyd was still young and Nya not yet a ninja, and lamented over how Kai and Zane were standing just a _little_ too far apart. 

Why did his brain trick itself like this? It was never even anything concrete, just a sense that he’d lost something that remained undiscovered. He hated waking up and being disappointed because it felt like someone else was meant to be in the room with him. He was always alone, but he was convinced that he wasn’t meant to be.

How stupid. He’d just saved Nya and all his friends from Nadakhan’s revenge, yet he still felt like a part of him had been ripped away and thrown out of sight. There was nothing else he needed in Steep Wisdom. His friends—his family—were all here with them. 

Wu.

Lloyd.

Nya. 

Kai. 

Zane. 

One teacher, five ninja including himself. 

He shivered and curled up tight in his blankets. 

What could possibly be missing? 

* * *

Every friday, the ninja hosted a sparring session in the shop’s courtyard. Zane’s titanium form gave him too much of an edge in fighting so he gladly officiated instead, while the four human ninja entered a round robin tournament until the winner was declared. The rules were simple: no powers, no weapons, and no quitting until Zane called the match. Hand-to-hand only. 

To summarize: certain sparring conditions resulted in Jay getting his ass handed to him on a weekly basis. 

He wasn’t a bad fighter. Compared to most people, he was actually pretty damn good. The competition was just unfair. Kai and Nya had been fighting since they were children, and Lloyd was some kind of fucked up prodigy and therefore good at literally _everything_ , so it wasn’t like Jay could be blamed for coming in last place every week. Give him a weapon, or even his powers, and he knew he could stand a chance against the others any day of the week. In hand-to-hand, he just lacked the experience—or in Lloyd’s case, the genes—to compete with his teammates properly. 

The Red Ninja stood before him, only a few feet of distance between them. The smile on his face made Jay want to shrivel away. He knew this smile well. Kai was gloating, and the match hadn't even started yet. He assumed it would be an easy win. 

All things considered, he was probably right. Jay’s matches against Kai were often embarrassingly short lived. 

“Let the match begin!” Zane announced from the sidelines. Nya and Lloyd watched with attention from the ground at his feet. 

Jay shifted into his defensive stance and tried to imagine Kai as an enemy, someone that wouldn’t make him want to pull his punches. As Kai moved forward, several different people appeared in his place. A Serpentine warrior. A nindroid. One of Chen’s soldiers. A medley of past assailants flashed in front of his eyes, cycling through old and recent faces of animosity until Kai took on the final form of a pirate and sprang his first attack.

All at once, years of training in the martial arts flew out the window. His breath hitched in his throat and he couldn’t do anything but shut his eyes as Kai’s boot slammed squarely into his chest. 

Okay. Maybe, just maybe, he _did_ have some underlying issues that needed to be addressed. 

When Jay first began his ninja training, he’d always felt acutely aware of the distance between himself and Zane. The White Ninja held several more months of experience over Jay’s head, all exemplified by the inhuman strength and accuracy that could be expected from a nindroid disguised as a human. Jay remembered observing him practice in the courtyard, watching on in silent despair as Zane perfected every stance, every move, and every throw of his shuriken so their blades always stuck in the centre of the target. 

On the other hand, Jay had always been a bumbling mess of a human, arriving to the Monastery in the midst of a creative rut and fresh off a near-death experience with his latest invention. His body was weak, and his movements awkward and imperfect no matter how many times he tried to master them. His improvement was slow and oftentimes lacklustre, while his successes only made him feel more and more inadequate when they so rarely came by. 

Kai was a walking emotional disaster, only focused on rescuing his sister, but he was ready to debut as a ninja after nothing but a short week of refining his skills with Wu. Even during their surprise attack, when Kai was wearing only his pyjamas and ready for bed after an exhausting day training alone, he’d been able to hold off Jay and Zane until Wu came to interrupt them. 

If anything, this had frustrated Jay more than Zane ever did. At least with Zane, Jay could blame his physical weakness on his lack of experience. He could do no such thing with Kai. 

_A fighting prodigy_ , as Wu had described him. 

Jay didn’t feel like a prodigy of anything. 

His back hit the concrete hard and knocked the air from his lungs, forcing him to gasp for breath as Kai continued forward. He knew proper falling technique—it was the first thing Wu had ever taught him. If he fell, he was meant to breathe out so he wouldn’t struggle for breath as he recovered. Even this, apparently, was now out of his reach. 

It really sucked sometimes, being the worst ninja. 

Rays of sun streaked across his vision. A pulsing pain thundered behind his left eye, blurring his vision as Kai came to stand over him. He covered his left eye with his hand so he could see Kai’s disappointed expression with perfect clarity. 

“What happened to you, man?” Kai kneeled down to get closer to Jay’s eye level. “Just last month you were giving it your all. What changed?”

“I don’t know,” Jay said, but he knew the answer. 

His body was frozen in time, forever convinced he was still locked in the lower decks of Nadakhan’s ship. His ankle tingled where the chain had once pinched his skin. His left eye had grown unreliable, sometimes working fine and sometimes losing sight altogether. His skin ached with bruises and cuts that no longer existed. 

Above all, it was his brain that refused to recover. An irrational survivalist notion infected his thoughts, telling him the fight would be over if he endured the pain until his assailant grew bored and moved on. The weekly tournament and nightly scrap-n-tap aboard Nadakhan’s ship coalesced into a singularity, events with entirely different purposes that would come to exist with one anticipated result: causing Jay as much needless pain as possible. 

Kai offered a hand to help him get up. Jay ignored it, even as the phantom pains from his time in the sky made it hard to stand. He knew it was rude, but Zane hadn’t called the match yet and acting like his normal self would make the others push him to continue. He didn’t feel like coming up with an explanation for why he couldn’t spar like this anymore. 

He didn’t hate lying. He just hated doing it too often.

Jay marched across the courtyard, only meeting Nya’s eyes once in a passing glance as he made his way to the shop’s main entrance. He pushed open the doors and tried to forget the look in her eyes. Was it sympathy, or plain pity? He hadn’t looked for long enough to really know. 

It was afternoon now, and dinner would be in a few hours. Normally, when he could bring himself to put in a _little_ effort into the tournament, he would easily laugh off his failures with his friends at the table and push them out of his mind, where they would hover until he was finally alone again in his big bedroom and no one could see him breakdown. His breakdowns were short but never sweet, taking place over the course of a few hours wherein his torso would turn heavy and curdle and his mind would move at incredible speeds to distract itself from its current implosion. Sometimes, he pulled himself out by working on a project or watching videos on his phone. Most of the time, he waited until he eventually fell asleep and hoped he would feel better the next day. 

This was a fairly normal post-battle experience. The other ninja had gone through similar episodes as well and turned out fine. He just had to wait it out until it disappeared. 

He was getting good at it, too. If he could plan his breakdowns on a schedule, he could have one terrible night a week instead of six! It was far better than suffering all the time, like he used to before he’d figured out how to cheat the system.

Fridays always made him upset, so it seemed like tonight was the night. Oh, joy.

Well, he certainly didn’t plan on eating with the other ninja tonight. Too many prying questions, too many sad looks. He’d rather eat alone and face them again the next day, when their memories were faded by sleep and he was feeling better. 

_Haha, yeah, I was just hangry_ , he would tell them during breakfast. _I hadn’t eaten anything all day and I guess I just decided it was time. Sorry!_

He would laugh, they would laugh, and everything would be back to normal. 

It was fool-proof. Seriously.

If there was something to be noted about Wu, it was that dealing with him carried a very certain duality. He was either in the right place at the right time, or in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fortune or misfortune of his circumstances had guided much of his life. 

This time, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Jay entered the kitchen and almost swore. Wu stood next to the kettle, watching it closely as it heated over the stove. He was very particular about drinking his tea at what he considered the _optimum_ water temperature, so all of the ninja knew better than to distract him when he was brewing a new cup of tea. Jay made his way past him to the other end with the pantry and fridge as quietly as possible, hoping to avoid a lecture about patience or interpersonal responsibility or whatever. 

Jay opened the fridge as quietly as he could, looking through his options for tonight’s dinner. He frowned. Vegetables, herbs, and random pieces of meat that he simply didn’t have the energy to cook. Shutting the fridge door, he moved on to the large pantry. Rice. Cooking ingredients. At the back, the leftovers from the bread they’d used for dinner the night before. 

If he wasn’t so conscious of Wu’s presence, he would have groaned. He didn’t want vegetables or rice, he wanted junk food; candy, sweets, perhaps even some pastries to make him feel sick. His body wanted it, his head wanted it, and he knew that eating whatever bland healthy meal he could concoct from the ingredients at his disposal wouldn’t help keep his breakdown flourish.

Somehow, he was convinced he would be able to find them here. He sifted through the shelves, looking for some kind of secret stash, a pile of gold in the form of brightly-coloured wrappers that crinkled at the touch. He could imagine it with perfect clarity, candy bags and chocolate bars stuffed into dark corners and hidden away from the prying eyes of Wu and their peers, a secret for just the two of them—

His hand landed on yet another empty shelf and his train of thought came to a halt. _The two of them_ , he thought again, wrinkling his nose in confusion. _Who the hell is the second person?_

“Your eye is swollen.”

Jay’s heart jumped and he turned his head to face Wu. The steam from the elder’s cup of tea twirled around his dark eyes. 

“I have never liked your tournaments,” Wu continued, almost innocently so. “Training should never be a competition. It should be an equal opportunity to learn. Wouldn’t you agree?”

He wasn’t ready for this kind of conversation. He reached into the pantry and grabbed the bread, resigning himself to eating it plain in his hurry to leave. “Well, the tournaments certainly teach me that I have a lot to learn. They can’t be all that bad, right?”

Jay tried to squeeze by. Wu took a small step to the side, blocking his path and trapping him in the kitchen corner. “If there is something wrong, you must tell me. Ninja should not keep secrets from each other.” 

How was he meant to explain it? No, seriously, how could he even find the words to describe his past two months? 

He’d already tried before, when Nya had first inquired into his injuries. It was an impossible question to answer. 

_Warm sunlight filtered in through the boarded window of Dr. Julien’s tower. Clothes in a pile on the floor, he sat between Nya’s legs in his underwear on the bed, fidgeting with the white sheets as she finished dressing one of many wounds on his left arm. There was too much left unsaid between them, but he knew better to disturb her when she was concentrating. Especially when she was concentrating on keeping him alive._

_She finished the knot in her bandage and leaned back, observing her work. She tightened the knot one last time and looked up to meet his eyes. She was too pretty, too perfect, it was too intense—_

_He turned his head to look away. Her grip on his arm loosened, and a moment later he felt her calloused fingers on his chin, pulling his face back to hers so they were only half an inch apart. His cheeks tingled. Lightning danced between his fingertips. It had been so, so long since they were this close. If he wasn’t so scared of making a wrong move, he would have grinned. It was a little exciting._

_Nya reached forward, brushing her fingers through his thick curls, all the way to the back of his head until he felt them hit the leather knot tangled in his hair—_

_Ah, now he understood. She’d tricked him._

_In one swift motion, she yanked his eyepatch away from his head. Without the darkness over his bad eye, his entire field of vision went blurry and he tried to bring up his hand to cover it, but Nya was too quick for him. She grabbed his wrists in her hand and threw her body weight forward, forcing him onto his back. His breathing grew heavy as she positioned his arms below her knees on either side of his torso, giving her free use of her hands to investigate Jay’s eye against his wishes._

_He’d only seen it once, reflected in the wide surface of a serving spoon during one of his dinners with Nadakhan. Swollen. Puffy. Black and purple and yellow bruises. The white part of his eye turned a terrifying red._

_That one glance was enough to decide he never wanted to see it again. He’d certainly never wanted Nya to lay eyes on it either._

_Her fingers hovered over his eye, but hesitation kept her from touching it. He couldn’t figure out her expression through his distorted vision. Was she disgusted? Sad? Angry? The blend of colours now hanging over him told him nothing._

_“I . . .” Her voice was quiet. Shocked. “What did they do to you?”_

_He tried to move his head to the side, to block his eye from view, but she gripped the sides of his head and kept it firmly in place. Her façade gone, he could now detect the slightest of trembles in her fingertips._

_“Don’t hide from me,” she scolded, but there was no harshness in her tone. “What happened aboard the Misfortune’s Keep?”_

_He opened his mouth. He wanted to answer. He really, really did. The memories rushed to the front of his mind, organizing themselves into a pretty timeline for optimal story-telling, but they arrived too quickly and too frenzied for him to properly come up with words to describe them. How could he explain the day-long labour with no food or water under the beating sun, or the fights in chains that followed, where the crew would have their way with him until he was sent to sleep on splintered wood with new aches and injuries to keep him awake until the early morning?_

_There were no words for the resignation that came with Nadakhan giving up on him and leaving him to die in his room, for the relief and fear that stormed through him when he heard fighting on the ship’s deck. The greatest poets would fail to capture the rush of hope that pushed him to reach forward weakly, to pull himself into a slow crawl towards the bedroom’s door._

_Jay was a lot of things. But he wasn’t very easy to kill._

_“I . . . he . . .” The attempted words died on his tongue. He couldn’t tell her. Not now._

_Perhaps not ever._

Telling Nya was already impossible. Wu didn’t even remember their time with Nadakhan—how could Jay possibly explain it? 

Wu still expected something from him, though. Jay wouldn’t be allowed to abscond to his room until he gave Wu a satisfying answer to his question. 

What was his question again? 

Oh, right. The question itself was never truly asked, but it was easy to string together based on their current circumstances. 

_Jay, what the ever-loving fuck has been wrong with you lately?_

Geez. A real answer would require at least a bullet-point form list. If he was feeling fancy, maybe even a slideshow with over-the-top transitions. Nothing like a funny animation of a slide turning into a paper airplane to ease the transition between each and every painful event in his life!

“I’ve just been thinking about prophecies,” he finally said. He could only hope this would keep Wu off his back until tomorrow. “Do you think they can make mistakes?”

Wu’s response came slowly. He was being careful. “Prophecies are instructions from the future. They cannot be right or wrong. They simply are.”

“Okay, well, I feel like that’s fake,” Jay said. He could feel a rant coming on, but didn’t try to stop it. “Wasn’t the original prophecy wrong in the first place? _Three ninja, of red, white, and blue, would train and protect the green ninja until he was prepared for his fight against his father_. Why wasn’t Nya in this prophecy? While the three of us were out fighting snakes or whatever, wasn’t she the one taking care of Lloyd all alone? She helped just as much as the rest of us. Isn’t it kind of sexist to exclude her?”

“Prophecies aren’t—they _can’t be_ sexist!” came Wu’s sputtering reply. He gestured with his hand, spilling tea over the lip of the cup. “Our purpose as ninja is to balance the light and dark of the universe. Prophecies are only a means of bringing this to fruition.” 

“Let’s not get distracted from the point here, okay?” He raised his hands in faux surrender. “I’m just trying to say that prophecies can be _incorrect_. Our main prophecy failed to account for Nya, so it’s possible for it to be missing other things, right?”

“What things?”

“Can’t be sure, honestly. Could be a lot of things,” he said with a shrug. He tallied off a list on his fingers. “We could discover cool new weapons, or unlock new powers, or fight new enemies, or maybe, just maybe, we could even get a new ninja. Wouldn’t that be super cool? It really feels like we could use some new life around here, anyways. No offense, but running a tea shop is only entertaining for so long.”

Wu put down his tea. “You . . . want a new member?”

In a way, this was its own olive branch. It would be much easier to continue life as normal if Wu thought he was _bored_ , rather than haunted by a suspicion that something was wrong about their team’s core foundation. _Oh, you know, I just feel like we’re actually meant to have a sixth member and we’re just forgetting about them_ , he could say, and then further entrap himself in the kitchen corner for who knows how much longer. Wu didn’t like to let things rest until they were dealt with fully. If Jay admitted to suffering from delusions of unreality, Wu wouldn’t leave him alone for _days_. 

“It just feels right,” he responded. He moved to push past Wu, who finally let him pass. “Six is a much nicer number than five, don’t you think?”

Wu seemed a little confused. Good. 

“I . . . I _suppose_ an even number might be nicer.”

Jay almost laughed. He’d won the confrontation.

Grip on his bread bag tight, Jay left the kitchen and flew around the corner, not staying long enough to hear if Wu had anything else to say. Liberty was a beautiful thing, and he intended to use it for some sweet, sweet alone time in his bedroom. 

Well, as sweet as an impending spiral could be. 

* * *

Door locked, lights off, windows shut, and bread half-eaten, he logged onto his laptop and prepared for another night of self-implosion. 

From a purely business perspective, it was most productive to isolate these incidents as much as possible. He’d found a rather simple way to make them happen on command. 

Rather recently, he’d discovered all the fun ways he could make himself miserable online. Social media and forum searches could pull him into some rather terrifying rabbit holes, where he liked to linger until a particularly horrible comment or post would push him over the edge and inspire enough hours of self-hatred to satisfy himself for a few more days. 

It had started with general searches for himself. They were done for fun, to make himself laugh about some of the things people would say about him online, but if he scrolled far enough down the results he could always find something negative, someone insulting him or making fun of him or just hating him in general. He knew he shouldn’t look at it, but there was just something so addictive about the way it scratched a certain part of his brain, the small part of him that liked to feel terrible and fed on the validation of all his insecurities. There was every reason in the world to stop, but none were so compelling as to make him _want to_. 

If this wasn’t enough to trigger his scheduled breakdown, he would move on to looking at news about Cliff Gordon, the biological heritage Jay was denied for reasons he still did not know. He would check his Chirp, and his Instagram, and think about how even after all of these years, he hadn’t even tried to reach out and connect in even the most marginal of ways. 

To top it off, if nothing else was working, looking up the ancient lore of Nadakhan and the Djinn was usually enough to do it. Stabbing knives into wounds that hadn’t quite healed over was always an admirably efficient failsafe. 

He bit into his plain bread and pulled up the Chirp website. 

Fingers flying across the keyboard, he typed _'the blue ninja_ ** _'_** into the search bar. 

He’d feel better tomorrow, when his late-night rampages felt a little more distant. 

He’d stop doing this eventually. He had to recover at some point, right? 

Yeah, he would be fine. This wouldn’t be permanent. 

_Just curl up and wait it out, blue_. 

* * *

When morning came, his blankets were on the floor, his hair was a mess, and _holy shit he was freezing_. 

He rolled out of bed ungracefully. His knees hit the hard floor, but he ignored the pain as he jumped to his feet and raced to his dresser. He threw on his warmest pair of sweatpants, his thickest socks, and the only sweater in his entire wardrobe, cursing himself for sleeping in his underwear when he knew autumn was right around the corner. After so long away from the desert, he should have known by now that the seasons could practically change overnight. 

Even with his clothes, the cold still seeped into his bones and he swore as he wrapped himself in his comforter. Was their A/C broken? Or was it seriously just that cold outside? 

He checked the thermostat on his wall. A pleasant 22 degree internal temperature. 

The weather app on his phone told him it wasn’t much colder outside. Certainly not cold enough to make him feel this way. 

Jay looked over his shoulder. “Cole, do you also feel—”

He stopped in his tracks. 

Holy shit. Holy shit holy shit holy shit—

A few steps later, he was in front of his mirror. He recognized this cold now, from some of his close interactions with Morro’s henchmen. It could only mean one thing.

His eyes were no longer only blue. Green and brown infected his irises, turning them into a mirage of colours. His hair was now a deep brown, and noticeably longer, as well.

The voice came from the back of his head, clear as day. 

**Do you remember me now, Jay?**

The memories spawned a storm in his mind. Every experience as a ninja, since Wu had first discovered him on that rooftop, was radically altered.

It was never just him and Zane in the Monastery. Cole had been there too, before Jay, a human with his own shortcomings to keep him anchored until they were ready to start their careers as ninja. When the ninja had split into separate rooms, Cole had come with Jay, the only other team member that could listen to him ramble on for hours on end without getting tired. Jay didn’t rescue himself from death in Nadakhan’s bedroom. Cole had come to his rescue, a ghost on the brink of disappearing that was determined to hold on for his friends. 

Jay could remember it all, now. The Black Ninja, the Ninja of Earth, _his own damn best friend._

“Holy shit, Cole. You were my Void.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading! this AU might seem a little confusing, but everything is explained next chapter, i promise! i hope you enjoyed it and stick around for more!!


	2. blink, blink, disappear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slowly, Cole fades away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone!! thanks so much for all the comments and kudos on the last chapter, i really appreciate it!
> 
> this is the only chapter with cole's perspective, and probably the saddest chapter in the fic altogether. after this we will embark on many fun possession hijinks that i hope you will enjoy.

**blink, blink, disappear**

Chronologically speaking, Cole’s first blink lasted a little less than six seconds.

The ninja sat at the wooden table in Steep Wisdom’s dining room, where Cole leaned on his elbow and watched them eat dinner. Ghosts didn’t get hungry, so he could only swallow his bitterness and try not to remember the taste of noodles and spices on his tongue. He distracted himself with conversation, talking with his friends about every subject that came to mind to keep his jaw from aching with desire. It worked, just barely. 

Nya put down a fork and covered her mouth with her hand as she chewed. “So, I’m trying to tell this lady that the blacksmith shop isn’t for making spoons—”

**Cole blinked.**

“. . . driver and people would always get mad at me for mistakes the kitchen guys made. Like, I’m sorry you asked for twelve slices of pepperoni and they accidentally gave you thirteen instead. Just feed it to your dog or something,” Jay complained. He reached forward for the water pitcher, even though Cole was certain his glass was full just a moment ago. “Some people are really stupid. I’m glad I’m not like them.”

He told himself he’d just spaced out. He’d been too distracted by the food around him to pay attention to Nya’s story, so he’d missed a chunk of conversation because thinking too hard made his ears go deaf. It made perfect sense to him, at the time. This was nothing more than the typical weirdness of being half-dead. 

The next time he blinked away, there was no food to distract him. Cole and Jay sat side-by-side on the bottom bunk, watching a Cliff Gordon movie on Jay’s laptop. The image was pixelated and surrounded by coquettish ads for fantasy games. They weren’t paying much attention now, as a romantic subplot made them bored and Jay filled the gaps in focus with stories about his _own_ romantic life. 

“I think I can do it,” he confessed, leaning against Cole. His fingers played with the hem of his shirt. “I messed everything up the first time, but I think I can convince her to go out with me again. I just have to prove that I’m better now.” 

Cole didn’t have any experience in romance. His knowledge came from movies and books, where love was fervid and precarious and characters broke up over the most minor of inconveniences. His frames of reference were unreliable, so he kept his responses neutral even when Jay asked for advice.

“Better in what way?” Cole asked, because he couldn’t quite figure out what Jay meant by _better_. Had he been bad before? Cole couldn’t remember their relationship being tumultuous until the love test had rocked Nya’s feelings. 

Jay took a long time to answer. When he shifted in his position, and the first sounds came out of his mouth, **Cole blinked yet again.**

A dramatic gunfight on-screen fired loud shots into the bedroom. Jay sat a foot away from him now, chest expanding dramatically with each anxious breath. His eyes were wide with fear and it was as though he’d just seen a—

“You just—” Jay stuttered as he forced the words out. “You just disappeared! I fell onto the bed, and I thought maybe I had phased through because that still happens sometimes, but you were completely gone. Did you do that on purpose? What was that?”

Cole collided his hands together, squeezing himself tight to ground his body in a physical existence. He was still here. It was okay. 

Except, it wasn’t. 

“How long?” he asked. “How long was I gone?”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t counting. I couldn’t—wait! The movie!” Jay paused the player, and moved his cursor over the timeline, backtracking the movie by ten seconds at a time. “That last thing I remember was the line about surprising your enemies. Hold on.”

They found the line. It had been approximately one minute and thirty-seven seconds since it was spoken in the movie. 

A horrible, sickly feeling twisted in Cole’s gut. 

“Jay, I think I’m in trouble.” 

If he wasn’t a ghost, the third time he blinked away would have killed him. 

Cole practiced airjitzu in the snowy heights of a mountain not too far from Steep Wisdom. Nearby, Jay was teaching Lloyd the basics for the first time, showing him the best stances for takeoff and how to best launch himself into the air. Cole often caught himself staring, lost in the rare sight of Jay acting as a leader. His best friend was loud, boisterous, and highly opinionated, but he didn’t like to assert his ideals onto anyone else. Seeing him in any authority position was always uncanny. 

Where some ninja excelled in weaponry, fighting, or stealth, Jay had always done best in the field of elemental mastery. It only made sense that he would be the best at airjitzu, and thus delegated to teaching Lloyd now that his body had finished recovering from Morro’s possession. The other ninja were good, but not nearly as qualified to bring Lloyd up to speed in a single session. 

The prodigy Lloyd was, he figured it out pretty quickly. It took ten minutes to figure out launching, an hour to figure out landing, and only two hours to figure out sustained flight. In a few short hours, Lloyd had caught up to Cole’s skill level with relative ease. He felt disgruntled, watching Lloyd fly in and out of the snow so gracefully, but put on a smile and congratulated him anyways. He wasn’t a child. 

On the way home, they made shortcuts out of crevasses in the mountain by using burts of airjitzu to soar across the gaps. Cole struggled most with sustained flight, so the bursts were easy, and he laughed as he crossed the crevasses even as the long plummet loomed below him.

They stopped at a crevasse not much larger than the others. “Be careful with this one,” Jay warned. “Do you feel the draft?”

Cole felt the air swirl around them. When Cole reached an arm over the gap, it intensified, as though a wind storm was brewing in the space between the ice sheets. “Do you think we should go around?”

“It’s easier to control the air when it’s windy,” Jay said, and put a hand on Lloyd’s shoulder. The younger ninja didn’t seem so certain. “We’ll be fine. Just use a stronger burst.”

“So, just don’t fall in,” Cole said sarcastically. “Sounds easy enough.”

“Well, it should be,” replied Jay. He gestured to the depths of the crevasse, where it was too dark to see all the way to the bottom. “The winds down there are much stronger. Up here, it’s just the odd gust escaping to the surface. Nothing we can’t handle.”

Lloyd looked over the edge and blanched. “Are you sure we can’t just take our dragons back?”

“No, that’s cheating. Come on, I’ll go with you,” Jay offered, reaching down to clutch Lloyd’s hand in his. “Our combined bursts might launch us pretty far forward, but a rough landing on the snow is much better than dying alone in a place where no one will ever find us, wouldn’t you agree?”

“You’re making this worse,” Lloyd deadpanned. 

“Yep. Let’s go!”

Without warning, Jay charged towards the edge. With Lloyd’s hand in his, he launched into a burst, pulling the Green Ninja across with him. They landed safely on the other side. 

Cole didn’t have to think twice. Feeling the air around him, he launched himself forward, soaring over the crevasse with the other cliff’s edge in sight—

**He blinked.**

When Cole opened his eyes, he was somewhere dark and cold. A bright sliver of blue sky cut across his vision, but his immediate surroundings were too dark to see. Cold wind phased through him. The jagged edges of hard ice pressed into his back. He inhaled sharply as he realized where he was. 

He’d disappeared and returned to the bottom of the crevasse. The surface was hundreds of feet above him. So were his friends. 

As he sat up, a long string of curses left his mouth. Falls couldn’t kill him because he was a ghost, so he at least knew there was no way for him to die down here. Trying to get out of the crevasse was a completely different problem. His airjitzu was too weak to boost him up to the surface. His Earth powers would normally be of help, but the rock foundations of the mountain were covered in a thick layer of ice and felt distant to him. 

No, no, he wasn’t stuck. He could get himself out of this. 

He moved to stand and fell right back down when a bolt of lightning struck the ground only a metre away from him. He looked up, but it was impossible to spot Jay and Lloyd when they were so far away. 

_“Are you back yet?”_ came Jay’s terrified voice over their comm link. _“Please tell me you’re back and not at the bottom of the crevasse.”_

“Well, I guess I have some bad news,” Cole said.

_“Did you see my lightning? Was it close?”_

“You almost hit me.” 

_“Okay, that’s good! I’m coming down.”_

Lloyd spoke for the first time. _“What? You can’t go down there! Can’t Cole use his powers to get out?”_

He explained the problem over the comms. A period of silence hung between them until Jay spoke again. 

_“I’m going down. My airjitzu is strong enough. Just hold on and hug one of the walls. I can’t see where I’m going and it’s going to get bright down there.”_

Cole did as he was told. He sat against the wall and lightning struck from above, flashing light into the cave every few seconds as Jay used his powers to guide his way down. When Jay got low enough to be in view, Cole’s heart fluttered in amazement at the sight. 

Snow caught up in the air rushed around the Blue Ninja’s body, supporting him in a tight cyclone as he floated downwards. Every few moments, the cyclone would break, and a strike of lightning would explode from Jay’s hand. The cyclone would correct itself, Jay would continue his descent, and the pattern would continue. 

_Otherworldly_ , Cole thought. Using airjitzu was difficult enough. Using it while also using his normal powers seemed impossible. _Ethereal._

Jay was truly a prodigy of unimaginable proportions. 

His boots hit the ground, and with one more lightning strike, he had his eyes on Cole. In the dark, his hands awkwardly collided with Cole’s chest. He moved them up to meet his shoulders and then to cup his face, and Cole couldn’t see him but could _feel_ him looking directly into his eyes. 

“When you responded—” Jay inhaled sharply, and Cole realized that he was out of breath. The descent must have exhausted him “—had you just come back?”

“A minute had passed, maybe,” Cole said. He wasn’t entirely sure. It hadn’t _felt_ much longer than sixty seconds. 

Jay’s hands squeezed his face tight. “When I saw you disappear, I started to count the minutes. You were gone for more than _two hours_.”

On the way up, Cole’s grip on corporeality loosened. The familiar tingling feeling of phasing spread through his arms, so he shut his eyes and focused on the sensations around him; the sounds of wind whistling past his ears, the warmth of Jay’s body, and the brightness of the sun that beat down on his closed eyelids. He took a deep breath. _I am here,_ he told himself. _I am real and I exist in this moment_. 

He exhaled. The tingling fled from his body and he hugged Jay even tighter, praying it wouldn’t happen again until they were back on the surface. 

It wasn’t like he could afford another fall, anyways. Jay’s body trembled from overexertion. If Cole fell now, there would be no rescue until Jay had eaten and rested enough to come back for him. Frankly, spending the night at the bottom of a crevasse wasn’t a very appealing situation.

They made a solid landing, snow crunching under their boots as they landed on their feet. Only a moment later did Jay collapse onto his side, a shuddering and panting mess. Lloyd tried to ask how he was feeling and frowned at Jay’s simple response of a raised hand. He was too exhausted to speak. 

Lloyd summoned his energy dragon. Cole wrapped the restraints around his legs and tied a security loop around Jay’s waist. He could feel his arms tingling again. Jay was barely conscious. If Lloyd took a dangerous turn, Cole didn’t trust himself to hold onto Jay securely enough to save him. 

They flew around a mountain’s peak and Steep Wisdom came into view. Jay laid on his back, head resting on Cole’s lap. His eyes fluttered open and he looked up to Cole, saying nothing but staring deep, deep into his eyes. A sad smile adorned his face. 

It broke him. Cole’s face grew hot. His vision became blurry. Each breath became more ragged, more forced, as his reality solidified around him. 

His friends were beautiful and full of so much life. 

**But Cole was dying.**

* * *

“You’ll have to excuse me,” Mystaké apologized. She gave the rope a test tug and smiled at her work. “I’m not very trusting of ghosts. Even if they come with a friend.”

Cole laid on the tea shop counter, gripping the edges with such fear that the wood splintered in his hands. Only a few feet above his head hung a clear pail of water, attached firmly to a hook but ready to tip at the pull of a rope. Cole was completely at Mystaké’s mercy. It terrified him.

“This is a little extreme,” Wu protested, but made no move to stop it. Like Cole, he knew what was at stake here. They needed Mystaké’s diagnosis. “My pupil will not harm you.”

“Then he should have nothing to worry about,” Mystaké retorted. She let go of the rope and moved her wrinkled hands to Cole’s body, fingers dancing up his torso and down his arms as though she could find the answers to his problem in his translucent skin. “Describe the problem to me.”

Wu sighed. “He’s been . . . _disappearing._ We can’t see or feel him, and he doesn’t process the time passing. We don’t know what is going on.”

“How long does he vanish for?” she said. 

“His last episode lasted six hours.” 

Cole bit his tongue and focused on controlling his breathing. It was embarrassing, letting Wu answer her questions as though he were a child at the doctor’s with his father. Not that he could answer them if he tried. Discussing his ghostly condition had a strange way of making his brain stop working. His words came out jumbled if he could speak them at all, and he was usually forced to spend time alone in his room or hiding in the bathroom until he could act like normal again. 

Slowly dying of an unknown affliction with no remedy was a little too much for him to handle. 

“The Cursed Realm has been destroyed. All of the ghosts should have died right along with it.” She drummed her fingers on Cole’s shoulder as she came to her conclusions. “Your pupil here is meant to be dead.”

“He isn’t,” said Wu. 

“He isn’t,” Mystaké repeated. She pursed her lips and continued. “I believe this is what the universe is attempting to correct.” 

Cole let go of the counter and swung himself into a sitting position. At his movement, Mystaké took a step back and wrapped her fingers around the rope. The bucket jostled but no water spilled over. “I was converted by Sensei Yang. I’ve never even _been_ dead,” Cole said. 

She hummed. “That’s why.”

“What’s why?” Wu said. 

Mystaké seemed to ignore him, her attention on Cole only. “You should have died with all those ghosts in Stiix, but you are still too human to be a real ghost. Your existence is realm-defying. I thought perhaps the universe was trying to kill you. Now, it’s become clear: the universe is attempting to erase you from existence.”

It felt, truly, like he’d swallowed a handful of glass. The shards ruptured his lungs so he could only take in shallow breaths. They continued down to his belly, where they cut up and pierced his stomach and would have made him vomit if he were human enough. Once he’d fallen over on Mystaké’s counter and curled in on himself, the glass moved up and down his body, generating a tingling sensation just below his skin that he knew too well. Wu moved to rest a comforting hand on Cole’s shoulder, but his hand slipped right through Cole’s body and rendered the elderly man only capable of speaking. 

“We will find a way to fix this,” Wu promised. It sounded panicked and hollow, a reassurance with no substance. “We still have time to figure out how to reverse this.”

“I would try to appreciate your remaining time together,” Mystaké warned. “The universe will resort to cruel methods to correct itself.”

* * *

The helicopter loomed over them, searchlight flashing on neighbouring rooftops and alleyways as it searched for the eminent ninja. It was getting close. Jay offered his hand, Nya took it, and as they floated down from the burst of airjitzu, **Cole blinked.**

The sun was high in the sky. _Midday._ He looked around, but found that he was all alone on the back of the billboard. The ninja had already left. 

The last sime he’d disappeared, they’d waited eight hours for him to return. He must have been gone for a long time if they’d deemed it unnecessary to keep watch of his location. 

With a sigh, he summoned his energy dragon and climbed onto its back. There was nothing exciting about returning home. His presence seemed to suck the happiness from his friends, and they looked at him like he was already gone. He couldn’t blame them. If any of them had started dying like this, Cole would have preemptively mourned too. 

His dragon flapped its wings and took off towards Steep Wisdom. Each landmark passed on the way home made his heartbeat faster, and each kilometre flown sunk his stomach to new depths. He tried to cry, but nothing came out. Ghosts couldn’t cry. Not even on their deathbed. 

A sickly voice spoke in the back of his mind. Cole was certain it was the universe itself. 

**_The next blink will be your last._ **

**_***_ **

Cole slid off the side of his energy dragon. “Hello?” he called out. “Is anyone home?”

The front entrance swung open. Kai leaned against the entrance, arms crossed over his chest. If he’d missed Cole at all, his expression didn’t show it. “Well, that took you long enough.”

Cole de-summoned his dragon and made his way over to Kai. “Where is everyone?”

“Gone. Wu and Misako took the others to go find some ghost scroll. He thinks it might make you better,” Kai said. He looked Cole up and down, analyzing him. “You feeling okay? I need you in good condition right now.” 

“For what?” Cole asked.

Kai gestured to the interior of the shop with his head. “We need to fix sparky. I think he’s broken.”

They moved briskly through the halls, Kai dragging Cole along by his hand as he explained everything. After Jay and Nya floated back to the rooftop, they had kissed and made up in the span of a minute. This made no sense to Kai, but he was willing to ignore it to focus on the real issue. As they broke their kiss, Dareth shouted from above, yelling something about the Black Ninja. It was only when they turned around to face the billboard did they realize that Cole had vanished again. 

This spawned two problems. Firstly, footage of Cole’s disappearance had played live on the air, so the world now knew he was slowly fading from their reality. Secondly, Cole’s week-long visit to the void seemed to have caused the total and utter destruction of Jay’s mental fortitude. The other ninja advised Kai to give him space, but he was determined to intervene. He called it his _brotherly instincts._ He couldn’t live with himself until he’d at least done _something_ to help. 

They stopped outside of the bedroom door. Kai lowered his voice to a whisper. “Look, I think I know what we need to do. But you might not like it.”

Cole nodded. “Tell me.”

“You need to say goodbye,” Kai said. “I don’t care if it might take another few months for you to disappear forever. I think you need to do it now. For closure.” 

“Will that help?” Cole said. He couldn’t imagine it would make anything better. 

“When my parents died, I didn’t get to say goodbye,” Kai began. He reached down and took Cole’s hands in his. “We couldn’t even afford a funeral. All at once, my life had changed completely, but it didn’t feel like anything had really happened. That’s what’s happening with you, Cole. One day, you’re going to disappear and we won’t even feel it. We won’t even _know_ until months have passed and we finally realize that you’re not coming back. How fucked is that, huh?”

“It’s pretty fucked,” Cole agreed. 

“Exactly. I wish I could have said goodbye to my parents, but I never got the chance. That’s why I think we should give Jay the opportunity to say goodbye to you. You know, before you kick the bucket completely.”

Kai was right. Cole wasn’t sure if this would help Jay immediately, but it would make things a little easier in the aftermath. He needed to start thinking this way. Soon, he was going to die. There was no use in hanging on to the present. It was time he started helping his friends prepare for their lives after his death. 

Cole pushed open the door and stepped inside the room. The lights were off and the blinds were closed. The only light in the room now came from the open door, which vanished when Kai shut it behind Cole. Looked like he was doing this alone. 

A familiar lump huddled beneath blankets on the bottom bunk of the bed. Cole approached it slowly, shuffling his feet on purpose so Jay could hear him. “Are you awake?”

Jay said nothing, but shifted a little under the blankets. He was awake. 

“We need to talk? Is that okay?”

He stopped at the edge of the bed and knelt down. Jay’s back was to him, but Cole didn’t touch him or ask him to flip over. Whatever this was, he had no intention of accidentally making it worse. 

“As you probably know by now, I’m kind of dying,” he said, and immediately cringed at his word choice. He had no idea how to approach this whatsoever. “I just thought that maybe I should—”

“Stop,” Jay muttered weakly. “Why would you tell me this?”

Guilt. “I haven’t even told you anything yet.”

“I can hear, you know. Kai isn’t a very quiet whisperer.” 

“Oh.” 

“I don’t like watching people die,” Jay said suddenly. “It’s not very fun.”

Cole allowed himself a small smile. “You say that like it’s happened before.”

No response. Jay went quiet again, and his stillness gave off the impression of being asleep. The Blue Ninja could be a good actor, Cole realized. He’d always been a very convincing liar. 

“Do you want me to say it or not?” Cole finally asked. 

Jay shrugged. “If it’ll make you feel better.”

Cole grit his teeth. This wasn’t about him. He was the one dying! He didn’t need closure, Jay did. 

He closed his eyes and breathed. This would help Jay after his death, not right now. That was why he was here. 

“Good—”

As he started to speak, Jay rolled over in bed. Cole finally got a good look at him. His left eye was puffy, and swollen, and the white of his eye had gone completely red—

“—bye,” he finished. 

**Then he blinked for the last time.**

* * *

The next time he opened his eyes, the world was a slightly different place. 

Jay was asleep in his bed, which he noticed was now a single bed and no longer a bunk bed. A laptop was plugged in at a desk in the corner. The room was messy, but felt empty. Cole surveyed the room and realized that all of his belongings were gone. It hurt a little bit, seeing himself erased from the present so easily. But he couldn’t blame them. He wouldn’t want to sleep among the remaining possessions of the deceased, either. 

If they assumed he was dead, he must have been gone for a long, long time. He opened the laptop on the desk and punched a bunch of random keys, prompting it to wake up from sleep. The date and time blinked in the corner of the log-in screen. 

The numbers felt like a slap to the face. _It had been three months_. 

There was a half-eaten loaf of bread on the desk, so Cole picked it up and decided to bring it back to the kitchen. He didn’t want to wake Jay too early. Wu was usually awake at this hour, so he could at least talk to him about the ninja activities that took place in his absence until the others woke up. 

Cole left the bedroom and made his way to the kitchen, walking quietly so the others wouldn’t hear him. He turned the corner to enter the kitchen. Wu leaned against his staff as he watched the tea kettle boil. 

“Wu!” Cole said. “I’m back!”

Wu didn’t even flinch. He was still focused on his tea. 

“Hello? Wu?”

Still, nothing. 

Cole frowned and placed the bread on the counter. Wu turned at the crinkling of the bag, but seemed to stare straight through Cole. He looked down. No, he was still visible. He wasn’t using his invisibility powers. 

“You can’t see me, either,” Cole mused aloud. Fuck. Had he travelled beyond the boundary of human perception as well? 

No, not entirely. He could still touch things. He could probably touch Wu, but that would freak him out for no reason. There was no benefit to be gained from convincing the ninja that the tea shop was haunted. Well, even if it _was_ haunted. By him. 

_A note_ , he decided. He would find pen and paper and communicate that way. At least they would know he was still alive. 

He left the kitchen and entered the actual shop, where he knew the drawers were filled with paper and various pens for filling out customer orders. He started to write his note, explaining that he was still here but couldn’t be perceived, and then found himself thoroughly enthralled by a framed group photo that hung above the front entrance of the store. 

It was Jay’s favourite, the photo of the ninja and Lloyd when he was a child and had only just begun to fulfill his destiny as the Green Ninja. It always brought back pleasant memories of the times when being a ninja wasn’t so deadly serious. 

There was just one problem: Cole wasn’t in it. 

Kai and Zane had been on either side of him in the original, but they now had their arms around each other’s shoulders, the distance a little large but not enough for a third body to slip between them. There was no extra shadow on the ground at their feet. This was either edited very well, or . . .

What was it Mystaké had said again? 

_The universe is attempting to erase you from existence_. 

Okay. 

So, maybe the ninja weren’t just moving on really quickly. Maybe he hadn’t quite found himself beyond the bounds of human perception. 

The universe was trying to correct its mistake. Like Mystaké had promised, it had resorted to cruel methods to achieve its goals. 

Cole wasn’t dead. _He’d never existed in the first place._

Panic, panic, panic. 

The universe would take his note away, too. He was sure of it. No part of him would be allowed to stay here. No reminders of his existence. 

He blinked. A tingling sensation pricked his skin. 

It was a little strange. He’d come to accept his death, but the prospect of erasure from existence set him into overdrive. _I am going to survive_ , he told himself. _I will not die today._

There had to be some way to anchor himself here. Something to keep him from being warped away from reality again. 

He found his answer in what used to be his bedroom. 

Jay was still sleeping, oblivious to all the ways his life had changed. A certain guilt crawled through Cole like a spider, telling him that this was wrong, that he was breaking every promise he’d made when he first became a ghost. Possession was wrong. Robbing someone of the privacy of their own mind and body was unforgivable. Lloyd would never forgive him. He would hate him forever. 

Lloyd couldn’t even remember him anymore. 

Cole placed a knee on the bed, eyeing Jay’s sleeping figure. If this didn’t work, he would pay the ultimate price anyway. Then he could forgive himself.

Slowly, he lowered his body into Jay’s, letting the warmth and humanness of his form enrapture him. 

**And this time, he didn’t blink.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! next chapter we are back to jay's perspective for the rest of the story :D


	3. well, it's a good thing we're the team's best liars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait! i had some major writer's block with this chapter, so I hope the length of the chapter will make up for it :D
> 
> writing this chapter made my head hurt. enjoy your possession tutorial. 

**well, it’s a good thing we’re the team’s best liars**

This was so, so, _so incredibly fucked up._

By the end of Cole’s explanation, Jay had resigned himself to sitting on the floor with his head buried in his knees. He could accept most of the story. Before their last goodbye, Cole had disappeared for a week’s time, and they were all preparing for the day he vanished and then never came back. Wu felt obligated to continue searching for a cure, but the rest of them knew there was no stopping Cole’s condition. The only thing they could do was wait for it to become explicitly terminal. 

Like Wu, Jay was a little different than the others. He didn’t believe there was a way to save him, couldn’t bring himself to even try because he knew only heartache awaited him in the end. This wasn’t what made him so different. His mindset felt so isolated because he _didn’t want Cole to come back._

During the long week without the Black Ninja, Jay had realized what was going to happen to his best friend. His disappearances— **blinks,** as Cole liked to call them—would become longer and longer until they spanned months and years and eventually he would be gone for longer than he was around. He was terrified of Cole blinking away before his eyes and then returning after Jay’s death, arriving home several years later to a world that was now soberly different. 

When he’d turned over in bed, and Cole was all blurry because of his bad eye, he hadn’t wanted to say goodbye. Kai was sure it would help, but Jay wasn’t Kai. The whole idea felt incredibly superficial to him, sentimental for the sake of being sentimental and the complete opposite of what Jay wanted. Cole didn’t need a goodbye. He would find them now and then, later in their lives, appearing at random intervals to say hello and then vanish once again. That didn’t warrant a goodbye. It warranted a _see you later,_ followed by a sincere apology because they were all too useless to do anything to help him.

It wasn’t like they could really be blamed. If the universe wanted to rip their family apart, they were powerless to stop it. Especially not someone as small and insignificant as Jay. 

Jay looked up from his knees. Slowly, he ran his fingers through his newly-darkened hair, hoping this would ground him in the situation a little more. It felt unreal, like he’d doped up on Venomari juice and couldn’t trust what he was seeing. If he wasn’t so cold, he would almost feel inclined to go back to bed and pass it off as sleep-deprivation. Not that he would be able to fall asleep, anyways. His blue-green-brown eyes were wide awake and staring straight back at him in the mirror. 

This situation could not have been predicted. Of all the worst-case scenarios he’d ran through his head during Cole’s week-long absence, this certainly hadn’t been one of them. Sure, Cole was disappearing for lengthier periods of time, but everyone had known this was coming. Not a single person had anticipated that Mystaké's prediction would be so literal. It was a little too cruel for their imaginations. 

And yet, here they were, Cole desperately clinging on to life in Jay’s body while the latter did everything he could not to fall face first into a breakdown.

 **‘I’m really sorry,’** Cole apologized for the seventh time. His voice echoed crystal clear in Jay’s head, as though he were listening to music with headphones. **‘If this is too much for you, I can go. I would understand.’**

Taking in a deep breath, Jay willed his heart to calm down. _‘If you go, you’ll disappear again. I’d rather be cold all the time than say goodbye for a year,’_ Jay thought back in response. If there was anything positive about his possession, it was his ability to communicate with Cole nonverbally. _‘There’s nothing to apologize for. We just need to work on figuring all of this out.’_

 **‘I can’t stay in your body forever. Even if the universe doesn’t try to snatch me away from here, it would be unfair to you,’** Cole said. **‘You can’t live with me inside of you forever.’**

Jay leaned forward, Cole’s words a little fuzzy in his mind as he focused on his reflection. When Cole spoke in his mind, the blue in his eyes seemed to shrink away, while the green and brown took a stronger presence. _‘Hold that thought,’_ Jay instructed him. _‘Can you try to move my body a little bit?’_

After a moment’s hesitation, **his arm raised towards the mirror, stopping when his fingertips were pushed against the cold surface.** Jay let out an astonished breath. His eyes had turned completely brown as Cole controlled his body. 

_‘Well, that’s going to be problematic,’_ he thought. _‘Do you think the others will notice?’_

 **‘Probably. They’ll notice your hair, too,’** Cole pointed out. Jay muttered a curse beneath his breath, pulling at his hair yet again. 

_‘I have no idea what to do about this. My hair isn’t just darker, it’s_ longer _too. How do I lie my way out of this one?’_ The ninja usually had breakfast together on weekends, and he was rapidly approaching the time he was meant to be in the dining room. It was a Wu thing too, so he would come kicking down Jay’s door within minutes if he wasn’t there on time. He _really_ cared about their bonding activities. _‘We have like, twenty minutes until I have to see the others. It’s not like I can tell them you’re possessing me.’_

 **‘They won’t remember me,’** Cole agreed. **‘It’s been what, a year now since we dealt with Morro? They’ll lose their minds.’**

Yeah, Jay definitely wasn’t in the mood to be exorcised by his friends today. Cole was right—if he tried to explain he was being possessed by a teammate they oh so conveniently couldn’t remember, they would only assume the worst. Jay could imagine that he wouldn’t see the light of day until they managed to force Cole out of his body. 

_‘Well, the eyes shouldn’t be a huge problem if you don’t control me and keep quiet,’_ Jay said. _‘Our only issue is the hair.’_

A moment passed as they both thought in silence. **‘Before public appearances, Nya used to straighten her hair with a flat iron,’** Cole said. **‘If you can steal the flat iron, you can tell everyone you decided to straighten your hair and then give it back to her later.’**

Jay rubbed his hands down his face. _‘Okay, great plan. Really great plan. Except for one thing: they’re going to want to know why! I can’t even think of an excuse!’_

**‘You don’t need one. For something so weird and harmless, saying you felt like it should be enough. If they press, just say you had a bad night. People always do weird things to their hair when they’re sad.’**

_‘Ha-ha. They won’t have trouble believing that one,’_ Jay thought bitterly. He wasn’t looking forward to explaining so many different things at breakfast. The other ninja would want to know about his new appearance. If they discussed the sparring session yesterday, Cole would definitely pry into his recent mental weakness. On both ends, Jay was going to be keeping a lot of secrets that morning.

**‘Sounds like a plan. Let’s go get the flat iron.’**

Fortunately, Nya kept all of her things in the bathroom closest to her room. She always liked to help Zane prepare their Saturday breakfast, so it was unlikely Jay would run into her in her area of the living spaces. All he had to do was get in, find the flat iron, and then escape back to his room. The plan itself was simple. Executing it would be something else.

Jay placed his hand on his door knob and stopped before turning it. _‘What if I run into one of the guys? It’s not like I’ll be able to hear them coming. You know, house full of ninjas, and all.’_

Cole didn’t answer his question. Instead, **a chilling sensation shot straight to his feet. Around him, the world went quiet. Strange reverberations moved from his toes up to his head, and a mental map of the hallway appeared in his mind.** He could sense the entire area around him. Down the hall to the left, one pair of light footsteps and one pair of heavy footsteps stomped around a small space. Zane and Nya, he realized. He could feel them in the kitchen. Down the hall to the right, where the bathroom was located, he could feel nothing. His way was clear. 

Holy shit. Cole’s powers were a lot scarier than he’d thought. 

_‘You never thought to tell us that you could use your powers to spy on us?’_ Jay shrieked internally. _‘This is so messed up. Did you do this all the time?’_

 **‘Only in places I could.’** The chilling sensation retreated back to Jay’s torso, where Cole seemed to enjoy hanging out the most. **‘And only when I needed to. It’s not like I can hear better or see you through the walls. It’s just a heightened spatial awareness.’**

_‘A really creepy one!’_

He opened his door and stepped out into the hallway. Confident in his plan, he raced to Nya’s bathroom and dug through her drawers until he found the flat iron. **Cole felt the earth again before they left the bathroom,** and then made his way back to his room and shut the door. The mission was a success. 

At least for today, he had a decent excuse for his altered physical features. He could deal with tomorrow when he woke up the next morning. 

After throwing the flat iron onto his bed, he checked the mirror again. He was fortunate that Cole had only affected his eyes and hair, but his appearance still seemed so uncanny that he wondered if all this preparation would go to waste as soon as the others laid eyes on him. _‘Do you really think this is feasible? My hair is still dark.’_

**‘Maybe . . .’**

**Cole turned on his heel and looked back to the bed. His eyes landed on the pillow. A smile spread across his face.**

**‘Your eye mask!’** he declared. **‘Wear it over your forehead, like a headband or something. It’ll pull attention away from your hair colour.’**

When Cole took over his body, he was brought somewhere else. He found himself at a dark beach, indigo sand and a black ocean the only things he could see. The cold ocean rose to his ankles and if he looked into the crashing waves, he could see and feel his real surroundings. Weird. 

Then, all at once, he was lifted from the water and dumped back into his body. Jay blinked, holding out his arms as he steadied himself in place. He sucked in a deep breath. _‘Let’s take it easy on the whole controlling-Jay’s-body thing, all right? It’s going to take me a hot minute to get used to this.’_

Jay followed through with Cole’s idea, pulling the eye mask over his forehead. It pushed his longer hair back, and when he observed it in the mirror, it was much harder to tell his hair had changed at all. If he was lucky, maybe no one would ask about it in the first place. He just needed something to make it even more convincing. 

He pulled off his clothes and changed back into his pyjamas. Fully intent on making his look complete, he opened his messy closet and rummaged through the bottom shelves, throwing his belongings in random directions until he finally located his old pair of slippers. Hanging on the frame of his closet door was his blue housecoat. He threw that on as well and then stepped in front of the mirror again. 

**‘This is amazing!’** Cole exclaimed with a laugh. **‘I wouldn’t question this at all. Good job, Jay.’**

Proud of himself, he grinned into the mirror. It was his first genuine smile in months.

_‘Let’s go eat.’_

* * *

The dining room table supported several dishes of breakfast foods, two pitchers of orange juice, and a pot of coffee for the caffeine-inclined members of the team. The others were ready in their places and waiting at the table, so as soon as Jay sat down in his seat between Nya and Zane, they fought for first dibs on the serving spoons and were quite ready to start eating. 

The last to arrive, Jay was the last to get his pick. As the others began to talk after taking their first bites, he filled his plate with potatoes and eggs, then poured a tall glass of orange juice to help wash it down. He stabbed his fork into his first piece of potato, lifted it to his lips, and then felt his mouth go cold. 

**‘I am commandeering your taste buds.’**

Before Jay could protest, **the fork was forced into his mouth.** He chewed unhappily, the once tasty potato now a flavourless mush as Cole stole all of its taste for himself. 

_‘This is so rude,’_ Jay complained. _‘You can’t just do that.’_

 **‘I haven’t been able to taste food for over a year. You can survive a few meals,’** Cole snapped back. Jay shoved the next piece in his mouth angrily, but did nothing to take back control of his taste buds. Cole was right, even if it made eating a somewhat miserable experience.

To his left, Nya nudged him softly with his elbow. Jay turned his head to meet her eyes. 

“Are you feeling a little better?” she whispered. Her hand trailed down his arm until it rested on top of his. She interlaced their fingers and squeezed tight. “I get a little worried when you disappear like that.”

**‘Like what?’**

Jay ignored him. He returned Nya’s hand squeeze and let out a quiet laugh. “I was just hangry,” he lied. “I hadn’t eaten anything all day, so I felt better after scarfing down some bread. Getting my ass kicked probably didn’t help, either.”

“You don’t have to compete each time, you know,” she said. “The tournaments are supposed to be fun. If they make you upset, just help Zane officiate. The others will understand.” 

**‘Tournaments? What, like sparring tournaments?’** Cole scoffed. **‘That’s such a bad idea. All they do is make people feel like garbage.’**

At Cole’s criticism, Jay recalled their first ever internal tournament: The Green Ninja tournament. Jay hadn’t been successful there either, and the final round had been down to Cole and Kai. The match was cut short, but the victory was ultimately handed to Cole. He’d proven capable of handling his Golden Weapon without losing control, so he was the final winner of the tournament. 

Shortly after the Monastery had almost burned down, Cole decided to place a ban on fighting tournaments among the ninja. Competition would only sour their ability to work as a team, he’d explained. They needed to operate as a single unit in battle. They couldn’t do that if they were constantly pit against each other during practice. 

_‘They were Kai’s idea. We use them to practice what we learn every week.’_

**‘So, if Zane officiates, the winning order is pretty much decided, right?’** Cole, apparently, was not finished complaining about their practice decisions. **‘You come in last, Lloyd comes in second last, and then Kai and Nya battle it out for first place. Kai probably wins most of the time, but Nya can outsmart him often enough to keep him on his toes. Those two have fun every week, Lloyd doesn’t feel too bad because he’s not in last, and then you get to feel like a punching bag because your teammates see you fake laugh it off and assume it’s okay to keep doing it. It’s just stupid.’**

There was something about Cole’s rambling that felt reassuring. He couldn’t quite figure out _why_ , but listening to him point out the flaws in their sparring sessions made him feel slightly better about his abysmal results. _‘You can seriously figure out the order just by thinking about it?’_

Cole let out a single laugh. **‘Ha! When you’re the team’s tactician, you have to know everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, I’d completely expect you to lose a general fighting tournament. That doesn’t mean you’re bad at combat—you just draw your strength from your elemental powers. In a fighting tournament with powers allowed, you’d come in first. No contest.’**

His heart fluttered, just a little bit. _‘You really think so?’_

 **‘Geez. You guys are a mess without me,’** Cole said. **‘You used to know this. Shouldn’t you remember now that I’m possessing you?’**

 _‘I can remember both of my lives, Cole,’_ Jay replied. _‘I have forty years of memories inside my brain. I think my identity is a little confused.’_

**‘Huh. Yeah, I guess that could be pretty confusing.’**

Jay turned his attention back to Nya, who waited for his response with a patient smile.

“I think I should be fine,” he reassured her. “If I’m not feeling it by Friday, I’ll bow out. I promise.”

Another hand squeeze. “Good.”

Cole didn’t seem too interested in prying more into Jay’s loss, so the Blue Ninja allowed some of the tension to escape from his shoulders. He just needed to keep surviving these encounters, and maybe he could escape this whole possession thing without Cole ever learning his secret.

Across the table, Lloyd leaned onto the table with his elbows and tilted his head to the side. “Jay, did you do something to your hair?” he asked. “It looks different.”

All of the attention turned to him. Zane, sitting to Jay’s right, reached over and tugged at one of Jay’s strands. “Lloyd is correct. It feels different.”

Jay swatted his hand away. “Because I straightened it, weirdo. I wanted to see how long it would get when it wasn’t curly.”

“Well, I guess the answer is _pretty_ long,” Kai observed. He squinted his eyes, as though he were suspicious of what he was seeing. “It seems darker, too. What’s up with that?”

**‘Kill him. He knows too much.’**

_‘Stop talking!’_ Jay scolded. _‘They’re going to see my eyes change.’_

Cole grumbled a little about finding a way to fix that problem, then fell silent. Good. Jay needed to put all of his attention into figuring out a good enough lie for Kai to leave him alone. 

Well, given the weird looks everyone was now giving him at the table, it seemed like he would need to lie to _everyone_. 

Jay swallowed. It was now or never. 

“I didn’t really want to talk about that,” he began, forcing his voice to sound a little whiny. Over-exaggerated, the way he liked to talk when he was being dramatic for a laugh. “Full disclosure, I had a bit of a mental breakdown. Nothing too serious, of course. You guys know how I get when I’m hungry.” He shoved a spoonful of scrambled eggs into his mouth and began to chew, trying not to grimace at the horrible texture of flavourless eggs. He covered his mouth with his hand and continued to speak. It would be a little less serious, if his speaking mannerisms seemed a little rude. “So, last night, I was all upset about a bunch of dumb things. Well, not dumb things, but just things in general. I think it’s a little fucked up, you know, the way we have to keep fighting all these evil monsters and whatever and like, I was supposed to be an engineer, okay? I wasn’t meant to be a stupid ninja with dangerous lightning powers, or a tea shop counter clerk between the hours of eight to three on mondays, tuesdays, and thursdays. Why do we even have this place, anyways? We get one customer every what, two weeks? It’s stupid. It’s really, really dumb, actually. Can any of you make it make sense? I don’t have a business degree, but something just doesn’t add up here.”

He swallowed, washed it all down with orange juice, and then kept going. “Maybe Steep Wisdom is a front for something. Do you think Wu is evading his taxes? Does he even pay taxes? If he does, do you think he claims us as dependents? I don’t know. What was the question again?”

Kai let out an exasperated sigh. “Your hair. Why is it darker?”

Jay stabbed another potato. He pointed at Kai with it, an exaggerated gesture. “Oh, right! So, like I was saying, I was having a mental breakdown over not-actually-super-dumb things. And then, suddenly, I remembered all this box dye that I bought the last time I was in a mood like this, and it kind of happened all at once. Next thing I knew, it was three in the morning and I was dumping dark brown powder all over my scalp in the bathroom.” He bit down on the potato and smiled. “Any other questions?”

A few seconds of silence passed as the room processed what he’d said. Satisfied that he’d stunned them so well, he picked up his half-full plate, dumped his utensils on it, and then briskly stood up from his chair at the table. 

“Well, now that I’ve been forced to indulge my loving friends and family with the story of a night that I’d personally rather forget, I think I will go shower for two hours and try to wash out all this dye. Goodbye!”

In the kitchen, he dumped his plate in the sink and departed for his room. As soon as he was out of view, **he doubled over in laughter and held onto the wall for support.**

 **“Holy shit,’** Cole said between laughs. **‘That was too believable. I’m honestly impressed.’**

Jay beat back the cold in his stomach and stood up straight again. _‘I’m a pretty good actor, huh? Is Marty Oppenheimer’s still taking students?’_

**‘You’re what, twenty? I don’t think they’ll let you in.’**

“Jay!”

He turned just as Lloyd bounded up behind him, a small bounce in his step. He stopped when he was next to Jay and offered a smile.

“We should hang out today,” he proposed. “Just you and me! It’s been a long time.”

 **‘You’re . . . you’re at eye-level with Lloyd.’** Cole hadn’t quite stopped laughing, and Jay had to force back the cold that tugged at the corner of his lips. He’d just made his dramatic exit ten seconds ago. He couldn’t smile just yet. **‘This kid usually goes up to my chest. You need another growth spurt.’**

 _‘Probably not going to happen,’_ Jay said. _‘I’ve gotten used to it. Height isn’t the only thing that matters in this world, you know.’_

Was there a nice way to turn down such an innocent request? Saturday was one of their days off, so Jay could fake a trip to see his parents, but that would force him out of the tea shop and he wasn’t very keen on leaving. At least, not until he was more comfortable with Cole in his body. 

**‘I miss Lloyd,’** Cole mused with a sigh. **‘I haven’t seen him in months.’**

Jay didn’t realize it was a _warning_ until the cold rushed back to his mouth and hijacked his lungs and throat.

“Yeah, let’s do it!” **said Jay.** The words had an awkward cadence, Cole’s way of pronouncing syllables and ending sentences making a poor match with Jay’s voice. “It’s been _way too long_.”

 _‘Jail!’_ Jay screamed internally. _‘This is banned. No speaking on my behalf!’_

 **‘You were going to say no! This is** **_my_ ** **first day back around you guys, and I want to spend it with my friends.’**

 _‘In case you’ve forgotten, we need to be_ avoiding _everyone right now. And among all our teammates, the person we need to be avoiding at all costs is Lloyd! What are we going to do if he recognizes the symptoms of possession? He’ll push us into a lake! You don’t want to double-die because you_ miss _him, do you?’_

Cole was unbothered. **‘I’m not particularly worried.’**

Jay, however, was pretty fucking bothered. _‘You do realize that we now have to spend the rest of our day lying to the person most likely to figure us out, right?’_

“Perfect! Let’s figure out everything later,” Lloyd said. He waved goodbye and disappeared back into the kitchen. At least, he was gone for now. 

**‘It’ll be fine.’**

_‘It’ll be really hard.’_

**‘Well, it’s a good thing we’re the team’s best liars.’**

* * *

As he stepped into the crowded metro car, Jay remembered why he hadn’t left Steep Wisdom in three months. 

It felt a little bit like suffocating. His grip on the pole was tight. In front of him, Lloyd babbled on about the new issues of _Starfarer_ because it was their only mutual interest and they never knew what else to talk about together. Didn’t he feel it, too? Didn’t he feel like being outside the tea shop felt like being part of a grand spectacle?

A few of the passengers were too absorbed in their music or phones to notice their surroundings. The rest of them stared remorselessly at the two ninja in the middle of the car, some shyly angling their phones upwards to take pictures or videos while some were perfectly content with simply watching. Jay tried to focus on what Lloyd was saying, but the burning eyes of the people around him were too distracting to allow him to pay attention to anything. Was he standing weirdly? Did they notice his new hair? Were any of them going to write blog posts about how proud they were to see him in public after his long hiatus?

If he namesearched himself tonight, he wondered what would come up. Lots of good things, probably. A few funny things. He squeezed his palm shut and relished in the sharp pain that arose from digging his nails into his palms. Come Friday, when he was allowed to feel terrible again, there would be so much new content waiting for him in the abyss of the online world’s hatred for him. 

He was getting tired of reading the same posts over and over again, anyways. Maybe going outside wasn’t so bad after all. 

**‘I almost forgot that we’re celebrities,’** Cole said. **‘You guys need like, a private car or something. Taking the metro is too much.’**

 _‘I’m glad you’re just as uncomfortable,’_ Jay said. Cole’s voice pulled him away from his spiralling train of thought, and he opened his palm again to make sure it stayed away for a little bit longer. _‘We can’t really afford anything fancy, though. Just a fun trip on a dragon and then a horrible trip on the metro. Tell me why you thought this would be fun, again?’_

**‘Lloyd’s kind of a fucking loser—’**

Before Cole could finish, Jay was coughing into his arm to disguise a laugh. _‘I feel like you shouldn’t be allowed to call the Green Ninja a loser.’_

“Are you okay?” Lloyd asked, looking him up and down with concern. 

“Swallowed wrong,” Jay said, holding up a hand as he coughed a few times extra times to prove his point. Holy shit, this was going to look terrible on the Internet later. “Don’t stop talking. I can still hear you.”

 **‘I don’t understand your objection. It’s a true statement,’** Cole continued. **‘He spends his free time reading comics, watching the worst shows I’ve ever seen on the TV in the living room, and then stays up late into the night looking at pictures of Cliff Gordon. He’s a fucking loser.’**

He didn’t let himself dwell on that last bit. Nope, not worth it. He was not doing this today. _‘Were you going somewhere with this?’_

**‘Yes, obviously. I expected him to try to play video games with you, or maybe convince you to watch the super-mega-extended edition of some movie made thirty years ago. I didn’t think he would want to go outside.’**

_‘This is your fault, by the way. This entire situation could have been avoided if it weren’t for you.’_

**‘Thanks?’**

_‘I’m just reminding you. No need to thank me.’_

When they finally exited the metro car, Jay took one look around the platform and then almost hopped right back in. 

Of course, Lloyd would choose one of the busiest places in Ninjago City for their peaceful getaway. Surely, there was nothing of merit to be found in any other location within the city. No, it was absolutely _imperative_ that Lloyd brought them to the busiest mall on the entire planet. 

On a Saturday, too. This was so fucking stupid. 

“Really, Lloyd?” he whined. “You wanted to come _here_?”

As they moved away from the platform and into the mall, the crowd became thicker and he found himself pressed in by people on all sides. They swarmed in and around him, moving in packs and duos and dozens of conversations registered in his ears. He caught bits and pieces of them, and for a moment, Lloyd disappeared entirely as he was caught up in the moment. 

_“It’s not my fault she decided to be so. . .”_

_“. . . well, maybe we should stop . . .”_

_“. . . hear about the news? They were seen on the—”_

_“. . . all I’m saying is that it’s an objectively better movie—”_

A tug on his sleeve brought him back to the present. Lloyd faced him, hand on his sleeve, a frown on his face. Jay hadn’t realized that he’d stopped moving. Around them, shoppers grumbled as they were forced to divert to the side to avoid crashing into them. “Jay? Are you okay?”

His brain felt a little thick. Vibrations tingled from his feet up to his head, and when he closed his eyes to try to stop them, his surroundings **never quite disappeared from his vision.** The brick and metal foundations appeared in colourful sketches against the darkness of his eyelids. The shoppers moving among the various floors were blobs of colour, hundreds of feet making the earth shake as they walked from store to store. The metro behind him was too far away to be heard, but he could feel it leaving the station with nearly two hundred passengers inside. The train in the opposite direction was arriving soon. Cars pulled in and out of parking spaces in the underground garage. 

His ears tingled. The lights above him ran a voltage of 285. On the wall to his right, the outlet powered five volts of electricity into someone's phone charger. The phone in his pocket’s battery had decreased by one percent in the time it took to get from the platform to the mall. All around him, phones and bluetooth headphones lost their battery life and pin pads at cashes authorized purchases and the sliding doors at the front opened and closed in rapid succession. If he paid attention—like, really, _really_ paid attention—he could hear the tiniest of electrical impulses in Lloyd’s body as he moved his hand from his wrist to his upper arm. 

Lloyd gave him a tighter squeeze. “Hello? What’s going on with you?”

 **‘I’m going to vomit,’** Cole moaned. **‘I thought my powers were bad. You can** **_hear_ ** **electricity?’**

 _‘Not as bad as feeling literally everything moving around you.’_ Jay opened his eyes and forced the buzz of electricity to the background, where he knew he could always safely ignore it. Mostly. _‘I don’t know how the fuck you deal with that.’_

 **‘I just got used to it,’** Cole said. Huh. It was largely the same story for Jay’s powers, too. 

Before he responded to Lloyd, he couldn’t help but think about the other ninja. Could Kai feel the heat in the air? On the other hand, could Zane sense the cold? Water was everywhere. How did it affect Nya on an everyday basis?

When he got home, he would ask. He’d always thought his electricity hearing was a unique thing. It had never really occurred to him that the others could be suffering from their own sensory issues as well.

“Sorry, I was just thinking,” Jay finally said. He flicked his wrist dramatically so as to seem unbothered. “You know how it is.”

“You’ve been doing that a lot, lately,” Lloyd said. His grip on his arm softened, but he didn’t let go. “This is my fault. I knew you had a bad night, I brought you here anyways, and now everything is probably worse than before. Do you want to go home? I’m really sorry.”

Just a few minutes ago, Lloyd was on the moon, rambling about _Starfarer_ with a smile. His expression was too serious now, a little too similar to the way it was when he took the lead during battles. Jay hated it, his aversion so strong he had half a mind to tell Lloyd to shut up and continue on their way indoors. There was something particularly soul-crushing about the way his demeanor had changed so quickly, like he was ready at the drop of a hat to take over a situation and bring a friend away from danger. 

Well, it wasn’t like that was very feasible at the moment. They could leave the mall and hide in the quietest corner of the world, but nothing would really get better. The dangers that made Jay freeze in the middle of crowds and hide in his room for days on end and dig his nails a little too hard into his palm were all strictly, strictly internal. It seemed a little selfish to say, but no one else could fix this for him. This was something he had to get over on his own. 

The others had tried. Nya, Kai, Lloyd, Zane, even Wu—they’d all made their individual efforts to coax him back into his old self. One by one, they’d failed. It was only inevitable. This would be healed by time, as the distance between his memories and the present grew and his gaping wounds were slowly stitched to a close. Distractions from his friends were nice, sometimes temporarily useful. But they were never a solution. 

If he had to fake being back to normal to get them to stop trying, so be it. Cole had been telling the truth. He really was the team’s best liar.

“I’ll have you know that I think all the time, thank you very much,” Jay responded, pushing Lloyd’s hand away and forcing a well-practiced smug look onto his face. “You’re not mixing me up with Kai now, are you?”

Lloyd’s expression morphed from concern to suspicion. “One second you’re miserable, and the next you’re smiling and laughing like it never happened. It’s giving me whiplash.”

“Trying to feel better requires an active effort. Don’t pretend that you weren’t acting the same way a few months ago.” A low blow, but Jay didn’t want Cole to have reason to feel concerned. He had to end this conversation as quickly as possible. “That’s why I like to talk about _Starfarer_ with you. It keeps my brain a little busy.”

“Oh-kay,” Lloyd said slowly, and Jay took it as a sign of reluctant acceptance. “Did you want to stay, then?”

“Of course!” Jay exclaimed. He gestured forwards, past Lloyd and into the mall. “You wanted to be here. Lead the way, Green Ninja.”

Lloyd took the lead. After a few steps, he continued his rambling about _Starfarer,_ concern over Jay’s wellbeing seemingly gone. There was nothing quite like an escapist sci-fi fantasy series to keep Lloyd distracted from the truth. 

**‘Jay!’** Cole said, voice urgent. **‘Do you see that store on your left?’**

On his left, he was in the midst of passing some kind of women’s accessory store. Items like necklaces and scarves hung on the displays in the window. _‘What about it?’_

**‘I know it looks kind of girly, but it’s really cheap and they have a lot of good stuff in there we used to use for dance costumes. If I’m remembering this right, they should sell colour contacts as well.’**

_‘For the ghost eyes’._ Jay glanced back to Lloyd, who was walking ahead without a care. _‘Lloyd can’t see us buy them. It’s too weird. He’d probably take a good look at our eyes and put two-and-two together pretty fast.’_

**‘We’ll have to figure out a way to ditch the kid later.’**

_‘Agreed.’_

They stepped onto an escalator. Lloyd looked down and offered his own smile. “I know it’s busy here, but that’s what makes it perfect. Crowds are some of the best places to hide.”

It struck him that he hadn’t received any strange looks since they’d entered the shopping centre. In the metro car, where there wasn’t much to do, they were the centre of attention. Here, where stores and ice skating rinks and restaurants pulled your attention in a million different directions, they blended into the crowd better than anywhere else. 

“You’re smarter than I thought,” he said. It was a backhanded compliment, but Lloyd beamed at it anyways. 

On the third floor, Lloyd dragged him into a dimly-lit media store. It featured a strange assortment of items, shelves lined with old video games and movies and albums that seemed to be from his parents’ time. Lloyd was moving towards the movie section, but Jay’s eyes wandered to the music stands. 

_‘Do you think they have your dad’s old albums?’_

**‘Fuck you. Don’t you dare get close.’**

Jay laughed into his hand and then followed Lloyd into the movie section. Lloyd was digging through a cardboard box labelled as clearance, standing on his toes as he reached inside. He finally found what he was looking for and pulled it out of the box. He turned to face Jay, holding up his prize for him to see: a blu-ray version of the anniversary edition of _Starfarer._

“I need it,” he said. He flashed Jay the biggest puppy eyes he’d ever seen. 

Jay didn’t understand his tone. “Okay? Get it, then.”

**‘He has no money, idiot.’**

Oh, no.

“I’m too young to have one of your magic money cards, and my mom only lets me use my government allowance for so-called ‘important things’,” Lloyd said. He sounded a little bit like he was begging now, and Jay realized that this had all been a set-up. Lloyd didn’t go to the mall to hide. He came here so he could con Jay into buying him a movie. “She said no and I _need it_ , Jay. I’ve been trying to find a physical copy of this for years.”

Jay scowled. “Kai couldn’t get this for you?”

Lloyd shook his head. “He spends all of his government ninja money on clothes. Nya has the same attitude as my mom, and Zane doesn’t even get money because he’s like, a robot or something. Come on, man. You’re the only one I can turn to!”

“Personally, I really love being treated as a last resort,” he said. “What makes you think I have any money, anyways?”

An awkward glance to the side. “You never leave the tea shop,” Lloyd muttered.

Now, it was Cole’s turn to laugh. **‘This is amazing. One second.’**

The cold invaded his upper body. Jay tried to fight against it, but Cole was too strong and pushed him down into the depths of his lower body. 

“You know what? I’d be happy to buy it for you,” **Jay said. He reached into his pocket and found his wallet. Cole dug through it until he found his debit card. He passed it to Lloyd, who stared at it incredulously.** “This is my magic money card. You can buy whatever you want as long as it’s under the tap limit. Sound like a good deal?”

Jay fell deep into a frozen ocean. It was dark. The world that was once around him was gone, and he could feel nothing but the sharp bite of the cold against his skin. The sounds that broke through the tumbling waves overhead were hazy and unclear, distant noises with no meaning. Cole’s other takeovers had been short, a few seconds of movement or words that dipped Jay as low as his ankles before he was pulled back out again. This was too long. The world was disappearing around him, his strength vanishing, and it felt in all the worst ways like being back in the Sword of—

Violently, he was thrown from the water and back to the surface. His senses crashed into him, a barrelling force of reality that had him rubbing his eyes as his consciousness swirled in his skull. It went away, gradually, and when he finally felt like himself again, he was on an escalator heading towards the bottom floor of the mall. 

**‘Jay?’** Cole asked. His voice was panicked, and Jay realized he’d probably been trying to get him to listen for a few seconds, now. **‘Are you okay?’**

Now that he was in control again, the ocean felt like a terrible dream, unreachable in clarity in his memories. He couldn’t quite summon the sensation again. _‘Don’t do that ever again,’_ he said. _‘It’s fucked up down there.’_

 **‘The ocean,’** Cole said. **‘I’m in it now, up to my knees.’**

A nauseous sensation stormed his stomach. Jay swallowed, trying to force it back. _‘You can take over. Just only up to my knees, okay? We don’t need to go deeper than that.’_

**‘I’m sorry, I thought—’**

_‘It’s fine,’_ Jay interrupted. He didn’t need an apology. There had been no ill intentions. _‘This was bound to happen as we got used to it. Just hold back more next time.’_

An awkward silence passed, and Jay feared that he’d sounded too angry. Then Cole began to speak again. **‘We’re going to that store. Lloyd’s busy in the movie store, so we have some time to get the right colour and then meet up again at the metro.’**

His stomach churned and took away Jay’s will to respond. He turned his focus to trying not to vomit, a little too worried about throwing up all over the person standing in front of him to think about anything else. 

Not that Cole was very determined to let him do that. 

**‘It’s a good thing we’re getting them, too. I plan on being here for at least a few more days.’**

_‘I don’t really want to think about what will happen when you leave.’_

**‘Let’s not worry about that, alright? I’ve got a plan. I’m actually pretty excited about it!’**

_‘A plan?’_

Cole’s smile permeated through his body, a sensation of giddy excitement. 

**‘When I first possessed you, I was just trying to stay alive. Now, I think I’m doing it with a purpose,’** he began. **‘There’s something seriously wrong with the team, Jay. It’s like you’re all a mess without me around.’**

_‘Okay? What’s your plan here?’_

They reached the landing pad. Cole’s excitement radiated through Jay’s bones, and he had to walk faster to try to burn off the sudden energy. He kept moving until he found the store, and relaxed his movements as he made his way to the counter with all the contact lenses. 

**‘First, I’m going to fix the team. Kai needs to be put in his place. I think we can do that by winning the tournament next Friday.’**

Jay pointed the clerk to the shade of blue closest to his original colour. She unlocked the case and handed him the box over the counter. 

**‘I’m not as comfortable with dying as I used to be. I don’t think it’s quite my time to go yet.’**

Jay paid with his secondary card. He thanked the clerk and then turned to leave the store. 

**‘So, when the team is fixed, you’re going to help me do something.’**

_‘Do what?’_

**‘You’re going to help me become human again.’**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading! i will try to bring the next chapter swiftly!
> 
> (ps: i know im terrible at responding to comments, but i appreciate each and every one of them. thank you so much!!)


End file.
